


ghost in the machine

by traitorhero



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Digital Consciousness, Gen, Horror, fitting Desmond into post-AC3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-13
Updated: 2015-10-13
Packaged: 2018-04-26 03:52:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4989214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/traitorhero/pseuds/traitorhero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was just supposed to be a glitch in the Helix modules...</p>
            </blockquote>





	ghost in the machine

Felix checked his setup, making sure that the broadcast software and his facecam were connected and transmitting. He rolled his shoulders, and opened his stream. A hundred or so people were already waiting for his broadcast to begin, and as he watched in the few seconds lag before everything connected, the number spiked up higher. He plastered a smile on his face, and aimed it at his facecam.

“Hey guys and gals, thanks for tuning in,” he said into the mic. “It’s me, AreYaFelixingLucky, and today we’re going to be playing in Abstergo’s Helix. Now, if you’ve been paying attention, you’ve all noticed that they’ve been putting out a lot of patches lately, and there’ve been a few theories as to why.”

Hook, line, and sinker. Felix watched out of the corner of his eye as the number of viewers spiked even more. The Abstergo forums had been going crazy for the past week and a half, trying to decode why the entertainment company kept pushing out the patches.

“Now, if you were watching my stream of Helix last week, you might have seen something strange. I didn’t bring it up on the stream, but from the YouTube comments and the Helix forums, a lot of people have been getting this same glitch.”

Felix grinned at the camera. “Well, maybe not a glitch. For those of you who weren’t watching or who haven’t played with the Helix, here’s the skinny: occasionally you can spot a guy in what looks like modern clothes, just wandering around in the memories. He doesn’t seem to interact with anything within the games, but he definitely isn’t your average NPC.”

He took a breath, letting his audience process what he had just said. A couple of people in the chat seemed to already have guessed what he was going to say, if the emoticons and random smatterings of letters were anything to go by.

“So, today we’re going to be hunting the glitch,” he told his audience. “If we can’t get it within the first two hours, I’ll probably start something else, but I thought it’d be fun to try. Now, since most of my face will be covered by the Animus Omega’s VR headset, I hope you guys who are out there just to see me look pretty don’t feel like you’re wasting your time.”

Giving a final check on his broadcasting software, Felix slid the headset over his eyes, adjusting the straps so that it sat comfortably on his head. He grabbed the controllers and logged on, letting the Helix interface load.

“The glitch supposedly only appears in a few of the stories,” he said, skipping to the Murder in the Levant module. “Last week we were in Washington and the Wolf, but I thought I’d try some of the other modules as well.”

Felix blinked under the headset as the Animus Omega loaded the Helix module. A faint sting behind his ear made him wince slightly, but he brushed it off. It happened every time he played, but he’d never been able to find anything that caused it. It was probably just a stray piece of fabric, and he’d never felt the need to take care of it.

As the simulation loaded, Felix pulled up his objectives, checking to make sure that he was in the correct sequence of the module. “This is one of the places that people have seen the glitch. If you want to try and find it for yourself, I’ve loaded into Acre, right before the assassination of Sibrand.”

He kept up a running commentary as he checked through the seaside marketplace. A few times he found himself blending into the crowd to avoid getting into a conflict with the guards who patrolled the area. As he turned towards the docks, Felix caught a flash of white in the corner of his screen. He stopped talking, and pushed through the crowd to where he had seen it. By the time he got through the beggar women who kept asking for money that Altair didn’t have, the glitch was gone. Felix sat back in his chair, tipping his head back and sighing deeply. Altair followed his motions to an extent, his digital avatar craning his head back to look at the blue sky filled with gulls.

“Well, we can mark that down as confirmed,” he said, a small amount of annoyance creeping into his voice. “I think everyone can agree that those beggar women are the bane of Altair’s existence. For a guy who kills people for a living, you’d think he’d put them out of their misery, but apparently not.”

A piece of paper fluttered to the ground next to Altair’s feet. Felix wrinkled his brow as he realized the paper had a prompt next to it. He pressed the button for it, and let his mouth drop open in shock as Altair bent down and picked it up.

I heard you were hunting me, the note said. Meet me at the Rosa in Fiore if you want to see how far this rabbit hole goes.

“Holy shit!” Felix did not squeal. “Okay, holy shit, we have the glitch. Okay, give me a sec, I gotta just calm down a little bit.”

Taking a deep breath, Felix looked at the paper again, double checking the information on it. The Rosa in Fiore was from the Triumph of the Borgias module, the chronologically second installment of the Ezio Auditore segments. After it’s success, they had released another module, Fear and Loathing in Florence, showing what had turned Ezio into such a bloodthirsty killer. In a few clicks he was loading the module. His last save had left him in the Campagna district, with no fast travel points nearby to let him get to the Centro district.

“Well, I can definitely say I wasn’t expecting this,” Felix said as he summoned a horse. “So, with what we just got, I think it’s safe to say that this probably isn’t a glitch. Maybe it’s some sort of quest line as a leadup for the next game in Abstergo’s lineup? Or a hint at the next module that they’re going to come out with, since the last one, Hell in Hibernia, came out almost two months ago and we haven’t heard of anything new since.”

Personally, Felix was hoping it was a new game in line with Liberation. The game had been pulled a few months into its release after a group of hackers had modified the base code, according to Abstergo. Helix had a copy of the game, and the nature of the program assured that hackers would have a harder time getting at it. He had played through it once, but the game seemed choppier than it had from the disc, most likely from the code that Abstergo had to cut to stop the hackers from getting at it.

Finally reaching the Rosa in Fiore, Felix pressed the interaction button, entering the building itself. A few of the courtesans waved at Ezio, and Felix grinned cheekily as Ezio waved back. Ezio was definitely the most likeable of all the assassins, if one could forget his bloodthirsty tendencies. His story was infinitely more interesting than some of the ones that Abstergo had put out, but half of that was probably because he had gotten multiple modules dedicated to him.

“That’s new,” Felix said to himself, walking Ezio over to a table with an interaction available. The brothel, while not one of the most interesting areas that had been developed, had been one of his favorite places to end streams when he had been playing through Triumph of the Borgias. As such, he had gotten used to all of the sights. Clicking the prompt, Felix watched as Ezio sat down, before the screen flickered and he was looking across the table in a first person view.

“What?” he said, flicking the controller’s sticks. Felix turned to look at the brothel, only to realize that the entire game seemed to have stopped, as if he had entered a pause screen.

“Hello.”

Felix yanked his head to face the other side of the table, where a man now sat. He looked back at the frozen brothel, and back to the man, who raised an eyebrow at his mannerisms. Dressed in a white hoodie with a black t-shirt underneath, the man didn’t look anything like any of the characters that Abstergo had released... except in his face. Underneath his headset, Felix narrowed his eyes, noting a scar that split his lip, almost in the exact same place as Ezio had his.

“This is really fucking weird,” Felix muttered. The man seemed amused, his lips quirking up as he continued to look at Felix. “So, it seems like Abstergo’s hidden this in plain view,” he told his audience.

“Not really,” the man said. Felix paused, but shook his head and ignored it.

“He looks a lot like Ezio,” he continued. “Give or take a little bit.”

“Give or take a few generations, actually.”

“But he looks really modern. Maybe Abstergo is trying to do a modern story with their assassin things or-”

“Look, you’re obviously ignoring me, which I kind of expected,” the man said, drawing Felix’s attention back to him. The man shook his head, a look of disgust passing over his face for a moment as he looked at Ezio/Felix. “And I’m having a really hard time talking to you when you look like that.”

The screen flickered again, and Felix watched as Ezio seemed to get up and walk over to stand behind the man. Ezio rested his hand on the man’s shoulder for a brief moment, before going to lean against the wall behind him. The first person view was disorienting, to say the least, after having played through the modules from a third person point of view.

“That’s better,” the man said.

“The fuck?” Felix swore, his gaze panning from Ezio to the NPC. “Okay, this is fucking weird.”

“I know, right?” he said with a bark of laughter. “You wouldn’t believe how many times I said that when this shit started for me.”

“Okay, it’s like he’s talking to me,” Felix said, a little waver of fear thrumming through his body.

“Well, I am,” the man said.

Felix swallowed, trying to get rid of the dryness that had invaded his mouth. “Very funny,” he said, wincing internally at how his voice cracked on the words. “I didn’t think Abstergo had a voice recognition program on the Omega.”

“They don’t,” the man said. The easy going nature vanished as he leaned across the table to Felix. “Look Felix-”

“How the fuck do you know my name?”

“Felix. Shut up and listen,” he said. “Your world? The world that all of your viewers know? It’s about to change.”

“Are you a hacker? How’d you even get into my stream?”

“I’m not,” the man said. He scrunched his face slightly, thinking over his words slightly. “Well, not technically. It’s not hacking if someone stole it from you originally, is it?”

“Not if they are Templars,” Ezio said. Felix looked at him, having almost forgotten that he was there.

“Who are you?” Felix asked. “How are you doing that?”

“My name is Desmond Miles,” he said. He pointed at Ezio, “You know him as Ezio Auditore, but Abstergo distorted his story to fit their own needs.”

“There’s no one in the Animus named Desmond Miles.”

“Well, not anymore,” Desmond said. He chuckled, as if at an inside joke. “Abstergo tried to erase me from everything. Of course, it’s kind of hard when it’s your memories.”

“This is insane,” Felix said, reaching up to take off his headset.

“More insane than being able to see your ancestor’s memories and live through them?” he asked. “C’mon Felix, it’s not the strangest thing in the world.”

“Okay guys, I’m going to call the stream quits for now,” Felix began to say. As he tried to reach up and take off his headset, his arm fell to the seat of his chair. He tried to raise it, only to feel his body from the neck down refuse to obey him.

“Sorry Felix, can’t let you do that right now,” Desmond said.

“How are you doing that?” Felix asked, fear pitching his voice up a few decibels.

“You ever get a little pain when you put your headset on? There’s a little needle inside the earpiece that sticks you every time you use it. The first time you logged on, Abstergo used it to take a snapshot of your genome. If they ever found something that they wanted from it, well...” Desmond said, shrugging his shoulders. “One dose of muscle relaxer later, they can come and grab you themselves. I just hijacked it to use on you. It’ll wear off in about an hour, give or take.”

“Why the fuck are you doing this to me?”

“Honestly, I don’t care who you are,” he said, leaning back in his chair again. “I just needed an audience, and you have the biggest one. Your viewers have jumped ridiculously since I started talking. And you even have some Templars watching. Hope they aren’t shitting themselves too much at seeing me.”

“Why would they care?”

“Well, for one, I’m dead,” Desmond said, as if it was commonplace. Felix felt his breath hitch, his heart speeding up at the information. “My body’s actually in a freezer in Montreal, in case they need to take new samples from Subject 17. Or Sample 17, as they call me now.”

“This isn’t real,” Felix muttered to himself.

Ezio laughed. “That depends on your definition of real,” he told Felix. “The Templars have tried to sell you their version. We’re just telling you ours.”

“If you’re dead, how can you be telling me anything?”

“My body’s dead,” Desmond said. He smirked and shook his head. “Worm food, you might even say. My consciousness... was uploaded, to put it simply.”

“And him?” Felix asked, wishing he could point at Ezio.

“I’m a collection of all the memories of Ezio Auditore that Desmond has,” Ezio said. “A... side effect of the Animus.”

“And not the only one,” Desmond told him. “Altair and Connor are attacking the Abstergo code that’s trying to take this session offline right now. Ezio offered to sit this one out.”

“But what’s the point?” Felix begged.

“Honestly?” Desmond asked. “I want to make Abstergo, the Templars, bleed. They stole everything from me, and they couldn’t even let me stay dead. They’ve used me to create a profit and to further their own agendas.”

“Abstergo, and through them, the Templars, want to take away the freedoms you hold most dear,” Ezio said. “Their idea of a perfect world has you enslaved to their ideals, with you none the wiser. The Assassins want to stop this.”

“That’s ancient history,” Felix retorted.

“Is it? Or is that what they want you to believe?”

“It doesn’t matter to me if you believe it or not, Felix,” Desmond said. “By tomorrow this will be all over the internet. There are six people recording it right now. One’s an Abstergo agent, but there’s nothing they can do about it. The truth is going to come into the light.”

“Desmond.”

Felix turned his head slightly, just in time to see Connor Kenway open the door of the brothel. His signature tomahawk was out, and what looked like bloodstains were splattered across his coat. He didn’t spare a glance for Felix, his gaze fixed on the other two.

“Time’s up,” Desmond said with a sigh. He got up, a blade that Felix hadn’t even seen on his arm flicking out. He looked at Felix sympathetically, but turned to follow Ezio to the door.

“What about me?” Felix asked. “What are they going to do to me?”

“If you’re lucky, the Assassins will find you first,” Desmond said. He paused, and turned to look at Felix again. “And if you meet someone who calls herself Juno, run in the other direction.”

**Author's Note:**

> Because I'm missing Desmond, and I love toying with the idea of him being uploaded instead of dead. And it's October, so I figured I'd write a light horror fic with someone associated with either the Assassins or Templars being shoved into the world/the hidden war being revealed to everyone. Originally Juno was supposed to show up at the end of this and kill Felix, but I didn't like it as much, and the open-endedness of what happened to him appealed to me.
> 
> Also, just saying, we have canonical brain-uploading in AC. And Desmond might just be as crazy as Clay was...


End file.
